


The Benefits of Being Wrong

by lemonsharks



Series: The Thing With Feathers [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Dragon Age Quest: Of Somewhat Fallen Fortune, F/F, Massage, Swimming, demisexual josephine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 20:10:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7236721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonsharks/pseuds/lemonsharks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumblr prompted - a swim/bath/massage</p><p>Cassandra accompanies Josephine to Val Royeaux, and the stop along the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Benefits of Being Wrong

The road to Val Royeaux runs long and hot, and Josephine insists on going alone, on horseback. 

“I’m not a babe to be swaddled and kept safe from the world, you know,” she tells the Inquisitor, who objects to her going at all. “And I will not put the Inquisition’s people at undue risk, not for this.”

She has arranged for few diplomatic necessities in the time she will be gone, and if she must meet the Comte Boisvert alone, then she will meet with him alone. He may not give her what information she needs, but Josephine is confident in her ability to negotiate for her own sake. The Inquisitor thinks the entire thing a trap, and refuses assistance with all the bluster of a storm. And so, Josephine mounts her horse and heads for the Skyhold gates. 

She does not expect to find Cassandra there, waiting for her. Packed and mounted as if for a journey. 

“I am coming with you,” she says, before Josephine can deny her. “I will not hear otherwise.”

The road to Val Royeaux is long and hot, and it has been some time since Josephine undertook a sojourn of this scale without a party at her side, or in any other manner than inside a comfortable coach. _Ten years at least_ , she thinks, doing quick calculations inside her head. 

She had been a bard at the time, sent to gather information on her patron’s rival--that journey had seemed a grand adventure. This one--Cassandra whistles a tune she does not know a few yards ahead, and Josephine argues with herself as to whether she should tell the entire story. Not before she decides what she will tell the Comte. 

The two of them are such a new thing, still tender like the first growth of spring, and she wonders: what will Cassandra think of her predicament? Will her knowing put her in more danger than she faces every day? The answer is undoubtedly _yes_. 

They stop by a hot spring on the fourth day, one well-frequented with travelers and boasting a wayhouse with several small rooms. “You’ve been tied in knots since we left Skyhold,” Cassandra says. “I know you cannot make a diplomat talk if she does not wish to, but I _require_ the we overnight here.”

“Oh, you _require_ it?”

Cassandra dismounts and calms her horse with a hand on his broad neck. “I’ll go not one step further until we’ve had a long bath and slept in a bed.”

This stubbornness is for Joesphine’s own sake, she knows. And bristles with it. Her muscles, shoulder to hip, also ache with so much time in the saddle, and her mind is no clearer than they day they left for this much time to think. When the sun sets and the temperature drops and two bodies’ warmth in a bedroll is scarcely enough to stop the shivering, well. Cassandra may be well used to such conditions. _Josephine_ is out of practice.

“Very _well_ ,” she says, and scowls. 

Cassandra grins as though she’s _won_.

The spring is in the back of a cavern, lit with sweet-scented torches, and this time of year relatively unpopulated. The room smells of mineral salts. Josephine finds an empty pool, steam wafting from the surface even as the summer sun beats down upon the world outside. She allows her drying cloth to drop to her feet and slips in by degrees. She cannot touch the bottom of the pool with her feet--not even with pointed toes, and so she treads water while the spring bubbles around her and warms her tired muscles through. Cassandra joins her not long after, having deposited their things in the room they will share--she would blush had the heat not already flushed her cheeks. 

Cassandra folds her drying cloth neatly and enters the pool in a single swift motion, making waves that tangle in Josephine’s hair. She stifles a laugh, which Josephine returns to her. They’ve perhaps five yards in any direction, and ledges around the edge of the pool to steady themselves. Cassandra ducks beneath the water and emerges with a shake of her head, ears pink from the heat. 

Josephine swims to her. 

“You were right, you know,” she says with some mirth. “I needed this. I’ve gone all...wound.”

Cassandra brushes the line of her jaw with damp knuckles. Their breasts touch and legs tangle--it is as close as they have ever been and she finds … she quite likes it. Despite the circumstances surrounding. 

“Are you ready to tell me what bothers you?”

“No,” Josephine says, because she loathes death, because she will never be _ready_ to discuss her culpability in the ends of her people as if it were a change in the weather. She breathes, and continues. “But I will.”

And she does.

They retire to their room with the story told and both women quiet and pensive. Josephine dresses in the clean shift she brought for her arrival in Val Royeaux, and Cassandra in soft leggings and a loose shirt. Armor and riding leathers lay throughout the room, ready to be donned again in the morning when they leave. 

Cassandra lies first on the wide bed, back to the room and head cradled in her arms. She breathes evenly, steadily, the kind meant to summon sleep. And, indeed, full night has fallen while they swam, and spoke, and planned what to do next with Josephine’s dilemma. 

“I will send for the Inquisitor when we reach Val Royeaux,” she says. “It is the easiest way to convince the comte to speak with you--and the most straight-forward. 

Josephine sits beside her and places her palm over the center of Cassandra’s back. 

“I did not know you were capable of such deceit,” Josephine says, with a laugh. She digs her thumbs into Cassandra’s spine, and she makes a happy little groan.

“I would not call it _that_.”

“Then what?” 

She spreads her hands, Cassandra’s warm flesh beneath her, and strokes. Softly on the way up to her shoulders, hard with the heels of her palms on the way back. 

Cassandra arches into her touch.

“I would call it omitting details.” She makes another sound, not a whimper but close enough to, and says, “Harder, _right_ there.”

The tight, knotted muscle near her neck resists Josephine’s touch. She uses her knuckles and her weight against it, bears down until she feels the spot _release_. She tugs Cassandra’s shirt up and over her shoulders, the cloth resting behind her head. Josephine has a small bottle of sweet oil in her pack, which she uses to freshen her hair on the road. It will do well enough for this purpose, as well. 

She pours a small amount into her palm and rubs her hands together to warm the liquid. It smells of flowering clover and elfroot. Josephine starts with fingertips at the base of Cassandra’s spine, relishing all the little sounds she draws from her love. She moves with steady pressure up and down the sides of the spine, stopping here and there to work knots loose or simply to linger over a group of freckles or attend a slashed scar. 

After a long while, Cassandra lifts her head and turns to Josephine with one brow raised. 

“What brought this to be?” she asks, her voice soft and her flesh now a kind of putty.

“You coming with me. Being insufferable the entire time. I would not change it for the world.”


End file.
